AMD recently took the wraps off of its latest mobile GPU series in the form of the R5 M200, R7 M200, and R9 M200 series. Currently, there is one GPU in each respective Rx M200 series including the AMD Radeon R5 M230, R7 M265, and R9 M290X. Do not get too excited, however. All of the new mobile GPUs are based on desktop versions of Volcanic Islands and not AMD's new Hawaii GPUs. As such, the Rx M200 series are essentially rebrands of the Radeon HD 8000M series (which was in turn OEM rebrands of the HD 7000M series) based around AMD's Graphics Core Next 1.0 architecture and specifically the Pitcairn GPU implementation.

All of the Rx M200 series support DirectX 11.2 Tier 1, up to 4GB GDDR5 memory, and at least 320 GCN shader cores. Informatin on the mid-range R7 M265 is scarce, but AMD has released information on the low and high end chips. Further, Computer Base has managed to put together specifications for the R5 M230 and R9 M290X. In short, the R5 M230 is a rebranded HD 8570 with higher clockspeeds and support for more memory while the R9 M290X is a rebranded HD 8970M with official support for DirectX 11.2 Tier 1 (the HD8970M technically supports it as well). A more detailed breakdown is as follows.

The R9 M290X features 1280 shaders clocked at 850MHz/900MHz (base/boost), 80 texture units, and 32 ROPs. OEMs can pair the GPU with up to 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,200 MHz on a 256-bit bus.

The R5 M230 has 320 shaders clocked at 855MHz, 20 texture units, and 4 ROPs. This GPU can support up to 4GB of GDDR5 memory at 1,000MHz over a 64-bit bus.

Users will be able to get the new Rx M200 series graphics cards in mobile systems from Alienware, Clevo, Lenovo, and MSI. Other manufactures should pick up the new GPUs soon as well. The new series is not terribly exciting being nearly identical to the existing HD 8000M counterparts, but it does update the lineup to AMD's new naming and branding scheme. Notably, should AMD release a Hawaii-based mobile GPU, it has not left itself much room as far as naming goes (R9 M295X?).